When Democracy Dies in Bright Daylight

By Brigitte L. Nacos

After Donald Trump won the presidency, the Washington Post began to print the warning “Democracy Dies in Darkness” underneath its masthead to highlight the need for journalism that speaks truth to power. After contributing to Mr. Trump’s stunning presidential nomination and election victory the Post and a number of other news organizations reclaimed belatedly their role as watchdog of government. Now, however, the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is no longer the right one to describe what we are witnessing on a daily basis.

Last century, the most authoritarian, dictatorial, and fascist leaders utilized the legitimate political process to win the most powerful office in the state. Once in the saddle they carried out immediately what the Nazis called Gleichschaltung—putting every public and private sector under the complete control of the leader, his hand-picked clique, his party. Think of Mussolini and Hitler.

Today’s autocrats, today’s fascist leaders consolidate state power not immediately like their predecessors but step by step over time. A good example is Hungary’s President Victor Orban who has openly proclaimed the end of liberal democracy and the advent of the “illiberal state” or illiberal democracy in his country modeled after Putin’s Russia and Erdogan’s Turkey. So far, there has been a purge of the civil service, curbs on the judiciary’s independence, intimidation of the press, establishment of election rules tilted in favor of parties that support him, and the vilification of foreigners.

Sounds familiar? Indeed! The U.S. president, too, has attacked Washington’s civil servants, declared war against the law enforcement apparatus and its leaders, fired highly placed officials in the Department of Justice and FBI, called for their removal of more people across departments, presides over an administration with dangerous gaps in knowledgeable personnel. Just think of the dismantling of the Department of States’ Foreign Service professionals. And last but not least, think of President Trump’s attacks on the legitimacy and credibility of the news media.

Just like the current autocrats in Hungary and Poland and elsewhere, the narcissist in the White House speaks openly and frequently about his disregard for democratic rules of the game.

Of the people in all branches of government and all its institutions, Mr. Trump expects and demands loyalty to him alone—not to the constitution, not the law.

Those are traits of dictatorial, fascist rulers.

Of course, no individual will get to the powerful top with a handful of supporters. In his book “The Anatomy of Fascism” Robert O. Paxton writes, “Fascists could never attain power without the acquiescence or even active assent of the traditional elites…” The most important enablers of Trump are his hand-picked advisers in the White House and the GOP majorities in both chambers of Congress—leaders and backbenchers united. Not only do they stand by silently but they actually cooperate with and defend this president’s shenanigans.

Paxton also points to the “complicity of ordinary people in the establishment and functioning of fascist regimes.” Trump’s core supporters follow their dear leader blindly. As he noted himself, when he said that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue without losing his followers.

While autocrats claim to act for the common good of “we, the people” and attack political and economic elites on their way up to power and thereafter, in the end, as the famous German playwright Berthold Brecht once said of fascist leaders, they are “thugs in power and agents of capitalism…”

Pondering the Brecht quote I thought of President Trump’s words and deeds--“the Russian thing,” the recent tax cuts for big corporations and the wealthiest one percent, the enrichment of his family while in office, the more than 2,000 lies in the first year of his presidency, the White House’s preference for alternative truth and alternative reality—and concluded,

Democracy does not only die in darkness but, sadly, dies slowly and in bright daylight as well.